I love the sounds of Christmas music, the colorful lighting on houses around the neighborhood. Santa and reindeer, along with snowmen and deer, are lit up on people’s lawns. One street in our neighborhood attracts people from all over the city. Every house has moving...

My Chessie is 15½ and moving slower each day. A little arthritis, deaf in both ears, and sleeping more than usual, I pray each day she’ll still be with me. When I have to go on a trip, I tell her, “Now you be here when I get back, okay?” So far she has been. Sometimes...

Is anyone else out there besieged at this time of the year with requests from nearly every charitable organization and political ones too? My mailbox is full and 2/3 of it goes into the trash. It’s not that I am hard-hearted; it’s just that if I send even $5 to each...

Last Christmas, with the loss of my husband still fresh, I didn’t feel much like entertaining. It just seemed like too much work. I did have my stepson, Mike, and his family over for dinner along with my youngest son and his wife, but it took me two days to prepare. I...

The holidays are coming up again and I’ll probably handle them better than I did last year. I miss Frank but making a life for myself. My daughter-in-law, Natalie’s family has taken me under their wing, Thanksgiving in Ramona with Natalie’s brother John and his...

My husband and I made 19 trips with a group called Road Scholar, a senior travel group that has adventures all over the world. We had a lot of fun adventures both together, and when I took a grandchild on one of their intergenerational trips. On five of those...

Working on any historical book requires research. Lots of Research! What foods did they eat, religious customs, clothing, housing, holidays? How did they talk to each other (you don’t want your characters using slang speech in a historical novel)? Then there is the...

Shopping is not my favorite thing, but if I see something that really takes my eye, I’m apt to purchase. I do have a rule on clothes. If I bring three items home, three old items of clothing go into the box for the thrift shop! The last two years I have been...

Years ago, on my 30th birthday, my grandmother presented me with a beautiful old cross made up of Bohemian garnets. Garnet is my birthstone. It was 150 years old according to the date on the back of the cross. I kept it in a safety deposit box as one jeweler told me...

Tomorrow I fly out to Asheville, North Carolina to attend another Road Scholar seminar. The topic is: The Women of Appalachia; Traditions, Stories, and Song. We will study the history of women in Appalachia, from the Cherokee to the early Scottish settlers. Centuries...